Calamity
by merrygolds
Summary: Rosalie Kohl is a young teacher who just so happens to live in a town full of supernatural-not that she would know about any of that. Even when her best friends, Laura and Kate, congregated in circles of werewolves and hunters, dear old Rosalie was kept in the dark. But how long can she remain that way? With Derek back in town, not for long. [Derek/OC; Under Construction!]
1. one

**Authors Note:** This story is being rewritten, so if you read one chapter and then move onto another just to find that nothing makes sense, then that is the reason. I'm hoping to get this done relatively quick so I can move on to starting on new chapters, but I don't want to rush. I want this story to flow a lot more than it does now and that's something that takes time to construct, so!

The new changes aren't going to be too drastic; just some little things here and there, maybe one big one right over there... You know. Anyway, I hope you still enjoy the story! :))))

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No speeding tickets, a lackluster social life, and Friday nights spent grading essays usually meant that one lived a rather safe, boring life, which, in turn, should cancel out the option to be brought into the local Sheriff's office for 'questioning'. Across from me, though, is the Sheriff himself and the look he's wearing on his aging face is not like anything I'd ever seen on him before. Even during my teens, when I'd been put in a few of the cells a room or two over by him on a number of occasions, had I never saw the look that the older man was wearing now. It was so distressing that I was beginning to rethink the idea of some kind of offense on my end as the reason for being hauled in here.

"Are my parents-"

"Oh, no, no," he immediately interrupts. "No, they're fine, Rosalie."

Relief blows through my system, cooling over the heated, panic parts that were threatening to push tears out of my eyes, and my heart slows to a normal rhythm. _My parents were fine_. It's a soothing thought, but as it flashes through my mind, it pulls another up. _Then why was I here_?

Eyebrows furrowed in confusion, I lean forward, outstretching my hands onto the table top.

"Why am I here, then?"

Sheriff Stilinski glances up at me and there is even more apprehension built up in his gaze. He fidgets in his seat, looking as if that one emotion was threatening to spill over onto the folder he'd brought in with him, clearing his throat and fixing the band on his watch. And when he finally manages to sweep his gaze up to mine, it's apologetic, sorrowful.

I swallow as another wave of panic flares up.

"You and Derek Hale… You two were close through high school, right?"

That was a turn I definitely hadn't expected and the sound of his name leaving someone's lips staggers me. A mental image of the boy pops into my mind and though his face is frozen at seventeen, he looks handsome. His has dark jade eyes, faint pick lips that are upturned in a playful grin, and the beginning traces of a five o'clock shadow that I remember him asking me if girls liked.

"Rosalie?" calls the Sheriff.

Blinking a few times, I feel as my expression contorts in order to mirror the confusion nearly overriding the panic and burdening sadness infiltrating my system. I focus on the familiar man sitting across from me and sigh.

"Yea, you know we were," I say.

He nods, flashing his azure colored orbs down to the manila folder he kept fiddling with. The sound of him sighing deeply vibrates quietly through the small room he was questioning me in and seemingly cuts away one of the few measly threads of patience that I had tonight.

I want to go home and drown in some old movie because I'm not alright anymore; I'm sad, stuck in that pit I sometimes got in when I realized that my old life was just charred memories and not something that I would ever be able to live again, and I want to be alone so I can be depressed without pitying eyes nervously studying me._  
_

"That it, then? 'Cause I gotta grade some papers."

"No... No, that's not it, Rosalie."

"Then what else?" I ask. "You know that I ran around with Derek Hale. I don't know why you'd need to drag me down here to ask me that, Sheriff."

"Yea, 'course I did. But, you see, I need to ask you a few more questions. Won't take long. I promise," explains the older man.

He clears his throat again and finally opens the folder still resting on the tabletop, flipping through a few of what I think to be photographs before he manages to get his gaze up to mine again.

"You heard about that body, or _half_ of a body, that we found two nights ago, didn't you?" When I nod, he continues. "Well, we made an identification and... Damn it, do I hate to do this to you, Rosalie, but you're the only left who can."

He slides a glossy picture across the table to me and, with my heart beating frantically again, I stare at him. Fear is eating me from the inside out now as the other emotions wait behind in order to devour whatever was left after it was done and I think I might be sick because I _know_, without having Sheriff Stlinski to tell me, who is going to be laying down in the image waiting for me to look down upon it.

The Sheriff sends me an apologetic look as he motions to the photograph. "I need you to confirm the identity of the body in that picture, please."

Worrying the inside of my cheek, I swallow the thick gathering of tears pushing against my throat and slowly scale my eyes to the shining image. My heart is going so fast once my orbs land on the thing that I think it really might push out of my chest and the idea that I might vomit is faintly there in the back of my mind. But once I properly focus on the thing in the photograph, I realize that my assumption had been wrong!

A half of Derek Hale's body is _not_ lying in the bed leaves! Instead it's...

"No!" I murmur, dropping the thing and burying my face in my hands. "No, that can't be..."

The tears that I'd been fighting against cut me off before I can get anymore words out and I'm sobbing much too hard to get another sentence out. Hiding my gaze from the picture, though, does nothing to prevent me from seeing the lifeless half of the body. It pushes asides Derek's smiling mental image in order to take position there and replays till I can't breathe.

"Alright. Rosalie, hey! Raise your head for me," comes Sheriff Stilinski. "You got to calm down or you'll make yourself sick. Sit up and take a deep breath for me."

I feel his hands on my shoulders, trying to push them against the back of the chair and force me up.

"Come on now," he whispers gently.

"Is that...? I ask him frantically, finally complying to him. "Is that who you found the other night?"

He looks forlorn and so regretful that I know he really did wish he had someone else to call on for this. But he was right when he'd explained that there was no one else who could've done this; the family of the person in that photograph was either dead, comatose, or gone. I was all that was left, so it was up to me to indetify the body of someone who I never thought I'd have to see in such a way.

"Yea," murmurs the Sheriff. "Used old dental records for the initial identification, but we needed something more current to confirm it and all we had was you."

Handing me a tissue, he goes back to his chair, picking up the dropped picture as he goes, and lets out a sigh as he takes his seat again.

I wipe at my nose with the Kleenex and use the sleeves of my jacket to clear my eyes of the moisture accumulating there. I don't realize it's no good till seconds later, when I'm crying again and have to take the box that Sheriff Stilinski offers me.

"I'm sorry, Rosalie," he starts. "But I need you to tell me who's in that photograph. Just one time, that's all, and all you have to do is say a name."

"This doesn't make any sense! None of the Hale's even live here anymore!"

"I know, but..." He sighs again. "Just tell me, Rosalie. Please."

For a moment, I stare across at him, my fists gathered around the used tissues clutched in between my fingers. I swallow thickly and abandon the idea to clear my face of my tears while sadly staring over at the man who I thought looked something like I figured I did at this moment.

"It's Laura Hale," I manage out, nearly chocking on the name.

He nods a few times, offers me the poorest smile I think I've ever seen, and shuffles the folder around some.

"Thank you," he murmurs. "I just... I got a few questions now. Think you can answer them for me right quick?"

I just shrug and continue to merely peer over at him.

Swiftly, a sort of numb feeling pushes over me in dramatic waves, and the idea to cry and bang my fists on the table and scream for an explanation for my friends death is lost in the empty pools that I think to be where everything is gathering in preparation to suffocate me later. But I don't care right now; Laura is dead and I had to identify her body because God-knows where the only living relative she has is.

I was all that was left to say the name of my dead friend and I think that might be sadder than the fact that she was gone from my life forever.

"Had Laura contacted you in the past few weeks?"

I shake my head at the Sheriffs question and he flips to another page.

"So you hadn't seen her at all recently?"

"No."

"What about before, maybe months ago… Had you talked to her at all then?"

"It's been a year since I've heard from her" I murmur.

"What about Derek Hale? Ever heard from him?" he asks.

I shake my head and give a weak attempt to not let that fact gather with everything else that was viciously waiting to attack me once I got ready to deal with this entire situation. It's a failure of a try, though, and I know I'll be crying about my lost friends for weeks to come.

Sheriff Stilinski goes through a few more pages but doesn't ask me anymore questions. It's only a moment later that I'm finally being released, a weak warning to not leave town because I'd probably need to be contacted for more questions later on and another apology the parting Sheriff Stilinski gives me. I just nod and let another deputy show me the way out.

I sit in silence as I'm being driven home, my brain whirling with images that I don't want to see but am not strong enough to fight off. The mental picture of Laura's ripped-in-half body is permanently fixed at the front of my brain and it doesn't move unless making way for the killer thoughts of what's happened to her little brother. There are no joyous past memories, just the idea of Derek being murdered too and his sister gone.

There's a little bit of familiarity in all of this, I think, though and without consciously meaning to, a memory of the Hale fire swarms into my mind. I don't realize that Laura hadn't left on her accord this time, but was murdered and never coming back, until I'm climbing the steps up to my front door.


	2. two

The next morning slams into me with the force of my buzzing and clattering cell phone, startling me out of the maddening and disorientating swirl of thoughts that had kept me up for the majority of the night. I slam a hand down on the screen and drag the device over to me, annoyed, my nerves grated and on edge.

Ending the noise with a swipe of my finger, I flick the phone down into the depths of the blankets twisted around my body while sighing tiredly.

Today was going to be long. I had a full day of teaching to get through, a faculty meeting that was cutting my lunch hour short, and too many essays and whatnot that were still waiting to be graded. Add on the fact that I was exhausted, Laura was dead, and they couldn't find her little brother, and I was hastily scrambling for the bottle of anxiety medicine that I'd been forced to seek out last night.

I'm able to shake out the recommended dose without having to read the black printed directions. I try to ignore how sad that makes me as I begrudgingly drag my weary body out from underneath the sheets.

I think that standing under the lukewarm currents of the shower head would ease me some, but my brain continues to whirl whilst I'm in there as well. It's so disturbing, the things that I manage to think up as I lather up my hair, and I find myself chewing down on my bottom lip in contemplation about calling up my therapist. Almost as soon as that thought enters the forefront of my brain, though, do I feel the shame of defeat lick of my body in a wave of heat.

I didn't want to resort to having to use the aid of someone else again in order to cope with the events in my life. For years I'd been able to manage on my own and I didn't want to succumb so quickly without even really giving myself a chance to try on my own. I resolve to start taking my medication again because I think it'll prevent me from having to stalk down to the clinic where my therapists' office was, telling myself that this is the right choice and ignoring the sense of warning nearly blaring in the back of my head.

_I couldn't go back to how I was. _It's a quick thought that frightens me. The image of my sickly form from years ago pushes aside all the other mental photographs clouding my thoughts and I outwardly cringe. Blinking quickly, I hurriedly finish my bathing routine, unconsciously focusing on the mundane tasks of getting myself together for work.

It works till I'm sat in my car and traveling down the road, headed to the school. There is nothing to distract me then and I nearly lose control of my vehicle because I'd decided that speeding in order to get to the school faster was my safest option when it came to escaping all these horrible thoughts.

Shaken and nearly sobbing, I tumble into the building, unprepared and barely stilled for the day.

.

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**(-)**

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I manage through the classes fairly well after the first one (which was, by far, the most embarrassing), my mind subduing for a time as I become engrossed in literary works and the little scuffle that rifted up between a few students.

At the end of the day, I'm shoving only two folders of ungraded papers into my satchel instead of five and feeling as if I could get through them if I had some good coffee. A little more energetic at the thought of treating myself to my favorite coffee place, I shuffle out of my room and begin my trek out to the parking lot.

"Rosalie!" comes a voice behind me. The Chemistry teacher, Adrian, is just a few paces behind me, I note after turning my head at the sound of him calling my name, and he looks to be trying to catch up to me. I slow my walking so he can fall in step with me easily. "Hey," he says once beside me. "Have a good day?"

His tone is careful and his eyes check my face too many times for this to be a casual chat.

_He was checking up on me._

Adrian and I had become friends when I'd accepted the English teaching position here about three or so years ago. He'd always been a little too friendly for his interest to be merely platonic, but I'd not had a real problem with the little compliments or the way he liked to make sure I made it to my car safely. I thought it was kind of sweet and if I had been in a mind to start dating again, then he was definitely the one I'd test the waters with. But I wasn't and so I'd done nothing but spurred his advances with gentle smiles.

"Yea, Adrian," I manage to smile. "Yea. Pretty good day."

He nods. "That's good." A minute of silence fills in then as we reach the doors, only interrupted by my thank you when he holds one open for me and allows me to exit out first. "I, uh… I heard about the Hale girl."

"I figured you'd had. Most everyone has by now," I murmur.

"How're you doing?"

I swallow the thick lump pressing against the back of my throat and shrug. "Okay, I guess. I just found out yesterday."

Frowning, he grips my wrist with one of his cool hands, halting our steps. We're close to my car, one of the only few in the parking lot, and I think about trying to escape to it. But when I feel Adrian's hand slip down to grip mine and the way his thumb soothingly rubs over the back of my palm, I warm a little to him.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, tone soft. "If you want to talk or anything, I'm here, Rosalie."

"Thanks," I say.

I can feel as a heated blush coats my cheeks when I stare up at him a little too long and clear my throat while shuffling away. Ducking my head, I taking a second to collect myself before looking back at Adrian. He's trying not to smile and that doesn't help my blush.

"Yea… Thanks for walking me to my car. See you tomorrow!"

I wave as I unlock my doors, feeling as I grow even more embarrassed when the grin finally pushes onto his face. He turns, though, and returns my wave with a few of his before heading to his own vehicle.

I let out an exasperated breath and press my forehead against the steering wheel after slipping in and closing the door. Drawing in deep breaths, I attempt to calm my racing heart, reminding myself of warm coffee and good, gooey cookies as a way to lessen my embarrassment. But all I can think about is Adrian's hand clasped around mine and how nice it felt to have him that close, touching me.

I get ruffled all over again and let out a groan. _Hopeless… I'm hopeless. _

The sound of my phone ringing interrupts my humiliation party, though, and I jump before starting to dig around in my bag for the thing. I find it at the bottom after five more rings, just managing to hit the accept button before I was worried the person would hang up.

"Hello?"

"Rosalie, it's Sheriff Stilinski," comes a gravelly voice.

I cower down in my seat, dread overriding the embarrassing feelings previously riddling my body.

"Oh. Hello, Sheriff," I say.

"How're you doin'?"

"Fine, thanks. How're you?"

There's some scramble on his end, something that sounds like papers being shuffled and someone speaking in the background. Sheriff Stilinski mumbles to another person and I think I hear my name emitting from his mouth.

"Yea, I'm pretty good too." He clears his throat. "Uh, listen. I need to ask ya some more questions, so… Can you make it down here on your own or do I need to send for a car?"

My eyes widen and my heart begins to race frantically. _More questions… _I didn't know if I could handle any more questions, to tell the truth. I was already so shaken up by what I'd seen in that photograph last night that I was barely functioning and relying on medication to get me halfway through the day. I was worried that any more time spent in that integration room and I'd be committed before the week was out.

"Rosalie? You there?"

"Do I have to?" I whisper.

I sound pathetic and feel a little shame at my weakness, but want a way out to desperately to care too much. I do not want to go back there and be asked about my best friend who was now dead, with only part of her body having been found. I _couldn't_ do it.

Sheriff Stilinski sighs. "I'm afraid so, Rosalie. I'm sorry. If I had anyone else, you know I'd ask them."

And I know he would. The Sheriff and I weren't close by any means, but he was a kind man that I know wouldn't want to have to torture me with all of this. It was just as he'd said: _there was no one else_. That thought settles more sadness into the pit of my stomach and I have to draw a few steadying breath in through my nose because I fear that I might start sobbing.

"I'll drive myself," I murmur.

"Okay," responds the Sheriff. There's more shuffling from his end, followed by a heavy sigh. "I am sorry, Rosalie."

"I know," I softly say.

I hang up after that, merely resting my phone in my lap as I peer out the windshield at the deserted parking lot. The few cars that are resting in parking spaces here and there are lost to my gaze because I am sucked into yesterday, sitting in front of that table with pictures of Laura's body resting in front of me. They're gruesome and glaring up at me brightly so there is no way some of the things in the photographs could be masked. I see everything in clear detail; it nearly makes me vomit.

With a shaky hand, I deposit my phone in the console, buckle myself in, and then start my car. I turn on the AC because suddenly heat is engulfing my body, patting my stomach with its scorched hands, seemingly trying to turn the little bit of food in it sour. I swallow thickly and crack a window, too.

The police station isn't that far from the school, so I have no time to really ready myself for the onslaught I know to be coming. I'm aware, of course, that there is no way I could honestly be prepared for what I was about to face again. Answering questions about your dead friend and her dead family was just something that a person could never be armored for, especially not someone who was as ate up by anxiety and fragile emotions like I was.

When I make it to the station, I am surprised to find that there is a little bit of chaos stewing out front. Three or so police cruisers have their lights on while a handful of officers try to wrangle somebody from out of one of the cars. I frown at this, wondering what in the hell was going on now.

An officer who was standing on the sidelines, watching s his fellow policemen wrestle with who I recognized to be a large, burly man, spies me after I get out of my car and nervously teeter closer to the clogged front entrance. He throws his hand up and signals for me to wait.

"Miss Cole," he says as he jogs closer. "There ya are. Right this way, ma'am."

"What's going on?" I ask.

The officer sends the group of policemen a wary glance before carefully taking my elbow in his hand. He starts to hurriedly lead me away, back up to the front and away from the crowd.

"Nothin' to worry about just now," is all he says.

I glance over my shoulder at the group, though, frowning more deeply now because the man the police officers were trying to wrestle with was hollering a little, crying out about not doing whatever they'd charged him with. By his tone, he seems enraged and if the number of police officers tackling him was no indication of his anger, then the way he was growling most definitely was.

Craning my neck, I manage to see around one or two policemen, and catch a few glimpses of the man. He's got shiny black hair, a large, muscly build that had been the first thing I'd noticed upon getting out of my car, and is a good few feet taller than most of the men who are trying to subdue him.

We draw a little closer to the crowd and he unnamed officer shepherding me inside tries to angle himself between me and them.

"Now, damn it! You hold still a blasted minute and we'll get everything straightened out, alright? We can do nothin' if you keep on fightin' us!" exclaims one of the officers.

A loud huff is echoed out by the suspect, but he stops fighting. He straightens up, allows one of the policemen to slap another set of cuffs around his wrists, and for another man to turn him towards the entrance that I've stopped in front of.

I nearly choke on a breath when a pair of jade green eyes lock on me. Of course I'd know them anywhere—I'd have to be completely stupid not too, after growing up with them peering at me in a thousand different ways.

But I'm not prepared to see them. I'm not prepared to be faced with a person who I'd thought was dead just a few seconds ago. And so, I dizzily stumble a little and my eyes go so wide I just know they're going to pop out of my skull.

"Derek?" I manage out, spluttering a little as I say it.

* * *

_Let me know what you're pretty lil' self thinks of the new direction of the story!_


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